Writing Process or Writing Craft?

Educators emphasize the "writing process" (draft-revise-finalize) as a way to help students improve their writing, but does this process actually help them?

For students who excel academically, the answer is yes. But for basic and struggling writers (including high school dropouts prepping for the GED), the answer is maybe yes, maybe no.

Why does this process work for some students and not for others? Good writers already have a sense of writing craft--that is, they know how to create grammatically correct sentences.

Poor writers, on the other hand, rely heavily on their often inadequate spoken language. And because they may also have poor reading skills, they do not develop a good sense of sentence structure. They write like they speak, and the results are inadequate.

Struggling writers need to develop writing craft, otherwise, the writing process by itself will bring only minimal improvement.

Writing process and writing craft must go hand-in-hand. Appropriate instruction in grammar has a part in this.